Wel Come To IT World

Monday, 28 April 2014

Led
by a surge in smartphone sales, the application or app market in the
country is likely to grow by more than four times to $626.23 million
(around Rs 3,800 crore) by 2016, with paid apps contributing Rs 2,065
crore.

The Indian Council for Research on
International Economic Relations (ICRIER) said that the total worth of
Indian app economy is worth $150 million currently (about Rs 900 crore)
but it has immense potential to grow.

"India is
on the cusp of a data revolution that will be led by mobile as has been
the case with voice," ICRIER Director and Chief Executive Rajat
Kathuria said here at a broadband conference organised by Sri
Lanka-based think tank Lirne Asia.

"A number of
factors favour an app revolution in India -the existence of developers,
a billion connections, a deficit in service delivery through
conventional means, a competitive mobile market combined with a serious
attempt to address regulatory constraints," he said.

He
said there are around 3 lakh app developers in the country with about
100 million app downloads every month. There are, however, many
developers who are building apps for the global market and not
necessarily for India.

Kathuria said
application stores such as Google's pay higher revenue share to the
developers as compared to the Indian mobile operators. He said India
needs local application distribution platform that provide 70-30 revenue
share to developers.

"Telecom operators may
have a role to play, provided they offer competitive revenue share to
app developers, in facilitating mobile payments since they cater to
large prepaid segment," he added.

Microsoft
Corp is rushing to fix a bug in its widely used Internet Explorer web
browser after a computer security firm disclosed the flaw over the
weekend, saying hackers have already exploited it in attacks on some US
companies.

PCs running Windows XP will not
receive any updates fixing that bug when they are released, however,
because Microsoft stopped supporting the 13-year-old operating system
earlier this month. Security firms estimate that between 15 and 25 per
cent of the world's PCs still run Windows XP

Microsoft
disclosed on Saturday its plans to fix the bug in an advisory to its
customers posted on its security website, which it said is present in
Internet Explorer versions 6 to 11. Those versions dominate desktop
browsing, accounting for 55 per cent of the PC browser market, according
to tech research firm NetMarketShare.

Cybersecurity
software maker FireEye Inc said that a sophisticated group of hackers
have been exploiting the bug in a campaign dubbed " Operation
Clandestine Fox."

FireEye, whose Mandiant
division helps companies respond to cyber attacks, declined to name
specific victims or identify the group of hackers, saying that an
investigation into the matter is still active.

"It's
a campaign of targeted attacks seemingly against US-based firms,
currently tied to defense and financial sectors," FireEye spokesman
Vitor De Souza said via email. "It's unclear what the motives of this
attack group are, at this point. It appears to be broad-spectrum intel
gathering."

He declined to elaborate, though he said one way to protect against them would be to switch to another browser.

Microsoft
said in the advisory that the vulnerability could allow a hacker to
take complete control of an affected system, then do things such as
viewing changing, or deleting data, installing malicious programs, or
creating accounts that would give hackers full user rights.

FireEye
and Microsoft have not provided much information about the security
flaw or the approach that hackers could use to figure out how to exploit
it, said Aviv Raff, chief technology officer of cybersecurity firm
Seculert.

Yet other groups of hackers are now
racing to learn more about it so they can launch similar attacks before
Microsoft prepares a security update, Raff said.

"Microsoft should move fast," he said. "This will snowball."

Still,
he cautioned that Windows XP users will not benefit from that update
since Microsoft has just halted support for that product.

The
software maker said in a statement to Reuters that it advises Windows
XP users to upgrade to one of two most recently versions of its
operating system, Windows 7 or 8.

Curved iPhone 6 Concept Brings New Rumors to Life is a post by Adam Mills from Gotta Be Mobile.
A
brand new iPhone 6 concept brings the most recent iPhone 6 rumors to
life and gives us a look at what an iPhone could look like with a curved
display.
As we move deeper into the new year, we’re starting to
hear more and more about Apple’s plans for 2014. The company is rumored
to be coming out with a new MacBook Air, an iWatch, brand new iPads, and
a new iPhone that is currently dubbed iPhone 6. The iPhone 6 is
expected to debut in the summer or the fall to take on the likes of the
HTC One M8 and the all new Samsung Galaxy S5 that launched earlier this
month.
Rumors have been rampant, but we still don’t know what
Apple’s next iPhone will look like. The lack of a full-fledged design
has spawned a number of iPhone 6 concepts that attempt to showcase what
the real iPhone 6 could look like when Apple debuts it on stage later on
this year. While some concepts are based on fantasy or wishful
thinking, others pull in actual rumors to give us a realistic look. Well
known designed Martin Hajek is responsible for several of the best
iPhone 6 concepts and today, he’s back with yet another.

This iPhone 6 concept incorporates the latest iPhone 6 rumors.

Hajek’s
new iPhone 6 concept, shared by Nowhereelse, showcases an iPhone 6
that’s based on a rumor that recently came out of Japanese blog,
Macotakara. The report, which came out on Wednesday, suggests that Apple
may utilize a curved chassis and curved glass for the display, a vast
departure from the squared-off design that’s found on the iPhone 5s and
iPhone 5.

This iPhone 6 concept also uses a larger display.

The
site claims that a trusted source tells them that the device will come
with rounded edges similar to what Samsung did with the Galaxy S3
design. Macotakara has a decent track record but at this point, the
design change is a rumor and nothing more than that.
That hasn’t
stopped Hajek though. The busy designer has quickly pumped out an iPhone
6 concept that is based on this rumor. The new iPhone 6 concept
showcases a beautifully crafted concept that utilizes curves around the
edges, just like the rumors suggest. The rest of the iPhone 6 concept is
based on the concept that Hajek modeled after the alleged iPhone 6
schematics that leaked out earlier this month.
The
concept, based on rumors, offers buyers a glimpse at a sleek looking
device that comes with an extremely thin design, rounded edges, a large
edge-to-edge display, and the change to the volume and power controls
that we’ve seen depicted in a couple of recent leaks. And while Hajek’s
version of the iPhone 6 may not look exactly like Apple’s version of the
device, it’s the closest that consumers are going to get until the real
iPhone 6 is released later on this year.
iPhone 6 rumors almost
exclusively point to an iPhone 6 with a larger display. Since last year,
rumors have pointed to two iPhone 6 models. One model is said to be
between 4.5-inches and 4.7-inches in size, similar to the concept seen
here. The other iPhone 6 is thought to be somewhere around 5.5-inches or
5.7-inches with HD resolution. If real, it would likely be marketed as a
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 competitor.

An iPhone 6 with a 4.7-inch display will likely be bigger than the iPhone 5s and iPhone 4s.

A
recent report from Reuters casts some doubt on a two-pronged iPhone
attack in 2014. The report claims that Apple may have delayed the larger
iPhone and that it will be the 4.5-inch to 4.7-inch iPhone and that
makes an appearance later this year. A more recent report from The
Commercial Times suggests that the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 may have been
pushed into 2015.
The biggest iPhone 6 leak of the month comes
from Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, shared by MacRumors. Kuo accurately
predicted many of last year’s iPhone 5s features and while he is not
100% on rumors, he is considered to be very reliable. Here is how he
sees Apple’s iPhone 6 features panning out:

A
specific iPhone 6 release date remains out of reach but rumors put the
device’s release during the fall. Apple’s last three iPhone models have
launched during the fall with the iPhone 4s coming in October and the
iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s launching in September. While this doesn’t
guarantee a release in the fall, it does make one likely given that
Apple tends to stick to predictable launch patterns.
The iPhone 6
is expected to be challenged by a number of new devices including the
rumored LG G3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4. While the LG G3 could launch
this summer, the Galaxy Note 4 is expected to touch down in the fall,
possibly in September at IFA 2014 in Berlin, Germany.

Google
is reportedly planning to dismantle its social network, Google+. Google
will turn Google+ into a platform instead of a product, TechCrunch
reports citing "multiple sources."

This means
that it will no longer exist as a social network aimed at competing with
Facebook, but it still may be integrated into Google's existing
products.

The company has allegedly been
shifting the teams that used to be at "the core" of Google+ and is
moving more talent toward the Android team.

Google had 1,000-1,200 employees working on Google+. Facebook has 6,818 employees.

According to TechCrunch, here's how the shakeup will play out:

* The Google Hangouts team will be moving to the Android team

* The Photo teams are also likely to move to the Android team

*
The rest of the employees are likely to take on mobile projects, such
as working on widgets that would employ Google+ as a platform rather
than a product. However, Google is still undecided on the matter.

All of these Google+ changes surfaced after Vic Gundotra, who led Google+, announced that he was leaving Google.

A
Google representative has denied to TechCrunch that any changes within
the company's Google+ strategy will change, saying that Gundotra's exit
has "no impact" on its plans for Google+.

Google
is also reportedly scrapping mandatory Google+ integration with its
other products. That doesn't mean it will completely go away, but the
integration may be scaled back.

Gundotra
reportedly clashed with others inside the company, particularly around
this idea of "forced" Google+ integrations into products like YouTube
and Gmail.

The changes aren't particularly
surprising, given Google+ as a standalone social media site didn't reach
the level of popularity as rivals such as Facebook. According to The
Wall Street Journal, Google+ had about seven million daily active users
two years ago.

By active, the WSJ means who
read posts on the social network, not those who click Google+
notifications while using Google's other services. It's possible it's
grown since then, but considering that Google+ is being broken up, it
seems unlikely that it had massive growth

Russia's
parliament has reportedly passed legislation that will ban Western
technology firms from operating on failure to store data within Russia.

According
to CNET, the "Information, Information Technologies and Protection of
Information" amendment, part of the country's anti-terrorism laws, would
require Russian data handled by tech giants such as Facebook, Google's
Gmail, and Microsoft's Skype to be stored within the country in order
for it to be accessed by state security and intelligence services for
legal inspection.

The move will facilitate the Russian government's surveillance plans that include snooping on user data.

However, the legislation is yet to be approved by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Once
the legislation gets the president's nod, Russia would force foreign
companies to install servers and data centers inside the country in
order to be compliant, which in turn would give greater control to the
Russian Federal Security Service over the Russian Internet, the report
adds

With
its domestic rivals fading in the rearview mirror and global
competitors coming into focus, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chief executive
of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), in early 2013 went on a quest.

His
target and that of many of his peers was the $100-billion Japanese
outsourcing market. Until very recently, TCS earned barely $100 million
of $12 billion in annual revenues from the Land of The Rising Sun.
Chandrasekaran, 51, was determined to fix this.

On April 22, TCS
jumped-started this business it had painstakingly built since 1987, when
it merged its Japan unit with IT Frontier Corporation (ITF) and a local
joint venture Nippon TCS Solution Center Limited to overnight create a
business with revenues of around $600 million annually.

Japan is
the world's second largest market after the United States. But it's been
a difficult one to crack courtesy of its culturally sensitive clients
chary of outsourcing work to vendors without local language and
knowledge expertise.

Tokyo Story

TCS,
and most rivals, have had to take the long way around. Starting with
work for global multinationals such as GM and American Express in China,
then to work for Japanese giants in North America (Toyota, for
example), then to setting up centres in places like China, which are
close to Japan, before finally opening up local delivery centres in
Japan.

Analysts believe TCS has put in place a strong framework
for future growth. "TCS has a robust business acquisition and execution
engine," says Dipen Shah, an analyst with Kotak Securities. "Right from
recruitment, to planning of projects and executing on time and within
budgets, TCS has built a business which is superior to others."

Having snagged a bigger share in Japan, analysts think this will be a stepping stone for TCS.

The
company, they say, will now focus on similar investments in Latin
America and Continental Europe to further globalize its revenues.

The
protracted negotiations by TCS signal the company's intent not only to
crack the Japanese market but also to be seen in the same bracket as IBM
and Accenture and less as an India-centric outsourcer.

Not only
did it multiply its business in Japan, it has also clambered onto the
top 10 list of global IT services providers, according to HfS Research, a
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based research services firm.

TCS
gained three places in this year's study, according to the report,
putting it in the same league as global giants such as IBM, HP, SAP and
Oracle.

But a No 10 position may not be enough for
Chandrasekaran, and sure enough rival analysts and industry executive
dispute the HfS figures; they reckon TCS may be higher than the No 10
ranking bestowed on them (see The HfS Ranking...).

According to a TCS spokesperson, TCS ranks No 2 in market value, No 7 in revenues, and No 4 in profitability.

Company
officials were not available for comments for this feature. "I think
TCS breaking into the top 5 [in revenues] can only be achieved in the
near future [next three years] through a major acquisition [or a few
sizeable ones].

Even at current growth rates it would be hard for
them to gain the [at least] $6 billion they need to get to a top 5
position [assuming zero growth in the top 5 position]," says Jamie
Snowdon, a vice-president with HfS.

Good Going

In
the ever-changing world of outsourcing, making long-term bets is risky.
"I expect if they don't make a major acquisition, the highest position
TCS will hit by 2016 is seventh, unless one of the bigger firms make a
big divestment or if there is a major shift in exchange rates and
Japanese firms lose ground," adds Snowdon. Other analysts think it is
only a matter of time before TCS hits the big time. "TCS has a lot of
momentum and today they are able to compete with the largest players in
the market," says Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of Everest Group, an offshore
advisory firm. "Their focus on localization of their business and
investment in understanding their customers better is paying off."

TCS'
revenue has doubled to $12 billion in around five years, while IBM
Global Services, its largest global rival, has stalled in the $55-56
billion range. In a difficult market, smaller global rivals have been
growing at a slower pace. Parisbased outsourcer Capgemini, for example,
has seen revenue go up from 8.37 to 10.09 billion in the same timeframe
(1 equals $1.4).

In an industry where its rivals have chosen to
grow either revenues or profitability, TCS has managed to do both. TCS
grew 16.1% year on year in the January-December period; Cognizant grew
faster at 20.3% albeit on a smaller base. TCS' growth is hardly without
challenges.

For example, a couple of quarters ago, the firm found
itself upended in the North America market for IT services, when
Cognizant took top spot. Cognizant has since then proven that its growth
in North America which accounts for two thirds of all IT spending is no
fluke by keeping its top position.

Despite its size, TCS has
also set itself up for future growth by building an efficient business.
It has a lean bench and lower attrition than most India-based
outsourcers. Its utilization, including trainees (a measure of the
number of people on billable projects), was at 77.9% for financial year
2013-14. While HCL Technologies' utlization was higher at 84.2% it lost
more people, with an attrition rate of 16.9% for its IT services
business. TCS' attrition rate at 11% was the lowest amongst its peers.

Riding the Wave

As
TCS closes the gap on its global rivals and stretches the lead from its
domestic competitors, analysts contend that the company needs to look
for multiple growth engines to sustain its growth. Chandrasekaran
indicated during a recent chat with analysts that Latin America and
Europe were priority sectors.

"As a company with [only] a billion
dollars in revenue... you do not have the scale to be able to say that
we are growing in all markets," he told them after the firm announced
results for the fourth quarter and financial year 2013-14. "The company
has the scale, size, the kind of offerings, investment capacity."

He
also added that TCS was not only able to snare new clients in Latin
America but also grow existing customer relationships. "We have built a
solid base in Latin America; we have got credible clients in this
market. So we need to scale up these relationships," he explained. "In
Latin America, our $1 million-plus clients are nicely migrating to $5
million-plus, and $5 million-plus clients are nicely showing signs of
migrating to $10 million-plus and $20 million-plus and so on."

Outsourcing
experts think that TCS needs to not just widen its geographic presence,
but also overhaul the kind of technology services it provides. "When we
look at the market, the future winners will not only focus on the
classic operate, maintain, transfer [of technology and tech assets]
business, but also focus on design and build," says R Ray Wang,
principal and founder of Constellation Research.

"Our clients are
asking for their system integrators to be co-innovation and co-creation
partners." It is this wave that TCS will need to ride to reach the
summit of IT services. "The firm that helps their clients with design
and build will be the winners in this next era of digital transformation
and digital business," Wang concludes.

Wednesday, 23 April 2014

Java Platform, Standard Edition 8 is a major feature release. This
document summarizes features and enhancements in Java SE 8 and in JDK 8,
Oracle's implementation of Java SE 8. Click the component name for a
more detailed description of the enhancements for that component.

Lambda Expressions, a new language feature, has been
introduced in this release. They enable you to treat functionality as a
method argument, or code as data. Lambda expressions let you express
instances of single-method interfaces (referred to as functional
interfaces) more compactly.

Method references provide easy-to-read lambda expressions for methods that already have a name.

Default methods enable new functionality to be added to the
interfaces of libraries and ensure binary compatibility with code
written for older versions of those interfaces.

Repeating Annotations provide the ability to apply the same annotation type more than once to the same declaration or type use.

Type Annotations provide the ability to apply an annotation
anywhere a type is used, not just on a declaration. Used with a
pluggable type system, this feature enables improved type checking of
your code.

Classes in the new java.util.stream package
provide a Stream API to support functional-style operations on streams
of elements. The Stream API is integrated into the Collections API,
which enables bulk operations on collections, such as sequential or
parallel map-reduce transformations.

Performance Improvement for HashMaps with Key Collisions

Compact Profiles
contain predefined subsets of the Java SE platform and enable
applications that do not require the entire Platform to be deployed and
run on small devices.

New variant of AccessController.doPrivileged
that enables code to assert a subset of its privileges, without
preventing the full traversal of the stack to check for other
permissions

Stronger algorithms for password-based encryption

SSL/TLS Server Name Indication (SNI) Extension support in JSSE Server

Support for AEAD algorithms: The SunJCE provider is enhanced
to support AES/GCM/NoPadding cipher implementation as well as GCM
algorithm parameters. And the SunJSSE provider is enhanced to support
AEAD mode based cipher suites. See Oracle Providers Documentation, JEP
115.

KeyStore enhancements, including the new Domain KeyStore type java.security.DomainLoadStoreParameter, and the new command option -importpassword for the keytool utility

SHA-224 Message Digests

Enhanced Support for NSA Suite B Cryptography

Better Support for High Entropy Random Number Generation

New java.security.cert.PKIXRevocationChecker class for configuring revocation checking of X.509 certificates

64-bit PKCS11 for Windows

New rcache Types in Kerberos 5 Replay Caching

Support for Kerberos 5 Protocol Transition and Constrained Delegation

Kerberos 5 weak encryption types disabled by default

Unbound SASL for the GSS-API/Kerberos 5 mechanism

SASL service for multiple host names

JNI bridge to native JGSS on Mac OS X

Support for stronger strength ephemeral DH keys in the SunJSSE provider

Support for server-side cipher suites preference customization in JSSE

The javafx.print package provides the public classes for the JavaFX Printing API. See the javadoc for more information.

The 3D Graphics features now include 3D shapes, camera, lights, subscene, material, picking, and antialiasing. The new Shape3D (Box, Cylinder, MeshView, and Sphere subclasses), SubScene, Material, PickResult, LightBase (AmbientLight and PointLight subclasses) , and SceneAntialiasing API classes have been added to the JavaFX 3D Graphics library. The Camera API class has also been updated in this release. See the corresponding class javadoc for javafx.scene.shape.Shape3D, javafx.scene.SubScene, javafx.scene.paint.Material, javafx.scene.input.PickResult, javafx.scene.SceneAntialiasing, and the Getting Started with JavaFX 3D Graphics document.

The WebView class provides new features and improvements. Review Supported Features of HTML5 for more information about additional HTML5 features including Web Sockets, Web Workers, and Web Fonts.

Enhanced text support including bi-directional text and
complex text scripts such as Thai and Hindi in controls, and multi-line,
multi-style text in text nodes.

Support for Hi-DPI displays has been added in this release.

The CSS Styleable* classes became public API. See the javafx.css javadoc for more information.

The -parameters option of the javac command can be used to store formal parameter names and enable the Reflection API to retrieve formal parameter names.

The type rules for equality operators in the Java Language Specification (JLS) Section 15.21 are now correctly enforced by the javac command.

The javac tool now has support for checking the content of javadoc
comments for issues that could lead to various problems, such as
invalid HTML or accessibility issues, in the files that are generated
when javadoc is run. The feature is enabled by the new -Xdoclint option. For more details, see the output from running "javac -X". This feature is also available in the javadoc tool, and is enabled there by default.

The javac tool now provides the ability to generate native headers, as needed. This removes the need to run the javah tool as a separate step in the build pipeline. The feature is enabled in javac by using the new -h
option, which is used to specify a directory in which the header files
should be written. Header files will be generated for any class which
has either native methods, or constant fields annotated with a new
annotation of type java.lang.annotation.Native.

The javadoc tool supports the new DocTree API that enables you to traverse Javadoc comments as abstract syntax trees.

The javadoc tool supports the new Javadoc
Access API that enables you to invoke the Javadoc tool directly from a
Java application, without executing a new process. See the javadoc what's new page for more information.

The javadoc tool now has support for checking the content of javadoc
comments for issues that could lead to various problems, such as
invalid HTML or accessibility issues, in the files that are generated
when javadoc is run. The feature is enabled by default, and can also be controlled by the new -Xdoclint option. For more details, see the output from running "javadoc -X". This feature is also available in the javac tool, although it is not enabled by default there.

New SelectorProvider implementation for Solaris based on the Solaris event port mechanism. To use, run with the system property java.nio.channels.spi.Selector set to the value sun.nio.ch.EventPortSelectorProvider.

Decrease in the size of the <JDK_HOME>/jre/lib/charsets.jar file

Performance improvement for the java.lang.String(byte[], *) constructor and the java.lang.String.getBytes() method.

Hardware intrinsics were added to use Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The UseAES and UseAESIntrinsics
flags are available to enable the hardware-based AES intrinsics for
Intel hardware. The hardware must be 2010 or newer Westmere hardware.
For example, to enable hardware AES, use the following flags:

-XX:+UseAES -XX:+UseAESIntrinsics

To disable hardware AES use the following flags:

-XX:-UseAES -XX:-UseAESIntrinsics

Removal of PermGen.

Default Methods in the Java Programming Language are supported by the byte code instructions for method invocation.